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A New Foe Emerges - Nipah | Spillover - Zika, Ebola & Beyond: Part 7

In 1988 Southeast Asia faced it's own battle with Nipah, a fruit bat-borne disease that kills more than three quarters of those infected. Nipah is only contracted in Bangladesh between the months of December and March, and this was a puzzle at first. It turns out that it is during these months that date palm sap, a national delicacy, is collected. Fruit bats, too, drink this sap, and the sap is thus the vehicle of Nipah transmission. Jonathan Epstein monitors bats in Bangladesh in an effort to prevent Nipah from becoming a global pandemic.